MATHTED INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION 2013
OCTOBER 24-26, 2013
UNIVERSITY OF ST. LA SALLE, BACOLOD CITY
How to Teach and What to Teach: Some recent
innovative projects in mathematics
education world wide.
Dr Alan Rogerson
Mathematics Education for the Future Project,
Poland – [email protected]
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Assessment
Teaching of statistics and probability
Maths and other subjects
Teaching methods
Curriculum development
Teacher education
e-learning
Personal areas of interest in Innovation
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Our students face a future of growing global crisis
-political
-social
-financial
-environmental
How can we as teachers help them confront these
future challenges?
Can we, as Paulo Freire suggests, empower them to
be subjects in control of their own destiny?
What are the fundamental roles of education and
technology within human society that may help us
do this?
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Mathematics Education………… for the
Future A new paradigm shift in education
Paulo Freire: a life-changing thinker who understood
the importance of the creative human spirit in
education.
His The Pedagogy of the
Oppressed, is a work full of
courage, wisdom and
humanism of a practical kind, which
seeks to empower students, not
merely to educate them.
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A new (humanistic) paradigm shift for science
and science education
Thomas Kuhn transformed the
image of science from a dogmatic,
fact-collecting and theory-creating
exercise to a fallible but human search
for better and different conceptual models
of physical phenomena
Kuhn's concepts of scientific revolutions,
paradigm shift and normal science have
illuminated Science as a humanistic, creative
struggle, impossible to systematise in the
opinion of Feyerabend
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A new paradigm shift for maths education
Godel revealed axiomatic deductive Mathematics
to be incomplete, and Lakatos showed the
history of mathematics to be fallible, and geared
to human creativity, harking back to the heuristic
ideas and examples of George Polya.
Lakatos wrote: “I respect conscious guessing
because it comes from the best human qualities
- courage and modesty… Certainty is not a
sign of success, but of lack of imagination… The
value of a logical proof is not that it compels
belief, but that it suggests doubts
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Change IS possible!
Dreams CAN come true!
What we can imagine CAN be made reality!
If we see today around the world
the BEST materials,
the BEST ideas,
the BEST teaching methods,
the BEST software
……………….then why cannot these be used
tomorrow in our schools?
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Paradigm Shifts in Science
and Mathematics
The seminal ideas of Kuhn, Lakatos and Polya
have changed the way we see the history of
mathematics, science and technology, and this
means a new paradigm shift embodied world-
wide in many innovative projects in teaching and
learning which show how new classroom
materials and methods can be used not only to
educate but to empower our students.
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Implications of this paradigm shift for
student learning and teacher education
Problem-posing leads to Problem-solving, Modelling,
and Real Life Themes which use
• Relevance
• Motivation
• Group learning
• Self-learning
• Self-assessment
These achieve holistic integration with other school
subjects, the everyday life of students and the real
world around them.
.
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We have seen a paradigm shift in education from a
subject-centred, to child-centred, to society-centred
approach.
References
Freire, P., 1974, Pedagogy of the
Oppressed, New York, Continuum.
Kuhn, T.S., 1962, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Lakatos, I., 1976, Proofs and Refutations,
Cambridge, CUP.
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Innovative Projects on the road from problem-
solving to modelling to real life themes
1961-1980 The School Mathematics Project -
SMP (UK) began the search for realistic themes.
1977 - MUED (Germany) produced extensive
problem solving and thematic materials –
leading to MatheLive a thematic text book for
normal schools, teachers and students.
1980 – The Mathematics in Society project -
MISP (UK, Australia, Italy, Spain, Poland etc)
1986 – 2011 The Mathematics Education into
the 21st Century Project (International)
Developing Quality
in Mathematics
Education
Dortmund Institute for
Development and
Research in Mathematics
Education
Developing Quality
in
Mathematics
Education
DQMEI (2004-7) and DQMEII (2007-2010)
Homepage: www.dqme2.eu
There are more than 1300 worksheets, projects and
real-life themes in 10 languages on the homepage.
Contact: [email protected]
The budget was 631,504€ for DQMEI, and 913,769€ for the
continuation project DQME II. Total budget for both
projects was more than a million and a half Euro.
Developing Quality in
Mathematics Education II – DQMEII
www.dqme2.eu
35 Partners
Institut für Entwicklung und Erforschung
des Mathematikunterrichts
Hans-Wolfgang Henn
Universities
Teacher
Education
Institutions
Schools
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Thematic Mathematics in Practice
We created many thematic units in booklet
form which effectively teach mathematics
implicitly: Survival, Travel, Housing,
Machines, Art, Architecture, Agriculture
etc – in fact the whole range of human
activities, including, for example, history
(The Story of Xenophon, The Life of
Captain Cook, The Merchants of Venice)
and creative fiction (Sherlock Holmes,
Business Trip to Hong Kong, A Tale of
Two Cities).
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Road Safety
Astronomer Jan
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Teaching and Learning Methods
Chalk and Talk(TV talking head)
Group Work
Theme Work
Project Work
Individualised (Independent, Programmed
Learning)
Distance Learning
Integrated, Interdisciplinary work
Team Teaching
Self Learning
Cooperative Learning
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Cultural Models
Western model
Aborigines (Australia)
Maories (New Zealand)
Islamic schools and universities
(Cairo)
Multiculturalism (Bi-culturalism)
South Africa Model (blended
classes)
Religious (Community, Hippy)
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Evaluation/Assessment
None (Rudolf Steiner)
Continuous (implicit)
Tests
Exams
Multiple Choice
Problem Solving
Word problems (comprehension, literacy)
Self-evaluation
Computer Assisted Learning
SAG (Roberto Baldino, Brazil)
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So what does the future hold for computers and education?
In 2011 the state of Florida, USA passed a law requiring that
all schools switch to digital textbooks by 2015.
In the same year South Korea's Education Ministry
announced a $2.4 billion investment for all of its schools to
go digital by 2015 (although later this decision was put on
hold).
It is not simply a question of whether we should welcome or
resist such changes, that is an individual decision, but the
technology will by force arrive and it is then only a matter of
time before education, if possible and practicable, utilizes
these new devices in schools and universities.
This is why publishers are moving towards e-publishing,
and why e-commerce and e-banking are now universal.
.